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Archive for the Events category

July 31, 2018

NASA 60th

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Wikipedia dixit:

“The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is an independent agency of the executive branch of the Federal government of the United States responsible for the civilian space program, as well as aeronautics and aerospace research.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower established NASA in 1958 with a distinctly civilian (rather than military) orientation encouraging peaceful applications in space science. The National Aeronautics and Space Act was passed on July 29, 1958, disestablishing NASA’s predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). The new agency became operational on October 1, 1958. Since that time, most U.S. space exploration efforts have been led by NASA, including the Apollo Moon landing missions, the Skylab space station, and later the Space Shuttle. Currently, NASA is supporting the International Space Station and is overseeing the development of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, the Space Launch System and Commercial Crew vehicles. The agency is also responsible for the Launch Services Program (LSP) which provides oversight of launch operations and countdown management for unmanned NASA launches.

NASA science is focused on better understanding Earth through the Earth Observing System, advancing heliophysics through the efforts of the Science Mission Directorate’s Heliophysics Research Program, exploring bodies throughout the Solar System with advanced robotic spacecraft missions such as New Horizons, and researching astrophysics topics, such as the Big Bang, through the Great Observatories and associated programs.”

Credits Video: NASA

 

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March 8, 2018

Explorer 1

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NASA dixit:

“Against the backdrop of the 1950s Cold War, after the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik, Americans were determined to launch their own Earth-orbiting satellite. Flash back to events leading up to the successful launch of America’s Explorer 1, and the beginnings of America’s Space Age, as told through newsreel and documentary clips of the time.”

Video credit: NASA

 

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Credits: NASA

The 140 companies and organizations listed in the Canadian Space Directory generated $3.44 billion CDN in revenue and employed over 8000 Canadians in 2010, according to the 2010 State of the Canadian Space Sector Report. These firms support the technologies required for weather forecasting, remote sensing, GPS systems, satellite and cable television, remote phone communication systems and even our Canadian astronautcorps.

 

They also provide equipment and technical support to scientists performing experiments and developing new technologies related to astronomy, Earth sciences, medicine and many other fields at over a dozen university faculties located throughout the country plus facilitate communications and space situational awareness for our Canadian military in the far North for Arctic sovereignty and on missions throughout the world. Taken together, these companies, the educational facilities developing new innovations, our military, plus the government and industry organizations and the facilities they utilize represent our critical Canadian space infrastructure.

 

 

But this infrastructure is in a state of crisis. What must we do to protect, support and grow this disparate group of private and public organizations, capabilities and supporting infrastructure? Join us to find out at this full day discussion of Canada’s future in space.

 

The Canadian Space Commerce Association 2012 Conference is featuring:

• Joan Harvey – Head of Research &Analysis, Policy and External Relations, Canadian Space Agency (CSA)
• Maryse Harvey and/or Jim Quick – VPand CEO, respectively, Aerospace IndustriesAssociation of Canada
• Dr. Christian Feichtinger – Executive Director, International Astronautical Federation
• Alex Saltmann – Executive Director, Commercial Space Flight Federation
• Robert Godwin – Director, Canadian Air and Space Museum, and Owner, Apogee Books
• Dr. Arsen Hajian – Arjae Spectral Enterprises
• Ron Holdway – President, Canadian Aeronautics and Space Institute, and VP of Government Relations, Com Dev International
• ScottLarson – President, Urthe Cast
• Dr. Gordon Osinski – NSERC/MDA/CSA Industrial Research Chair in Planetary Geology, University of Western Ontario
• Larry Reeves – Director, Canadian Satellite and Design Challenge (CSDC)
• Nobina Robinson – CEO, Polytechnics Canada, and member of the Review of Federal Support to Research and Development (the Jenkins Panel)
• Kevin Shortt – President, Canadian Space Society
• Cliff Sosnow – Chair of the International Trade and Investment Group, Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP
• Michael Woods –Partner, Heenan Blaikie Law Firm

 

Date & Time: Wednesday, March 28th, 2012, 8:30 AM – 5:30 PM, with a Networking & Social Eventat 7:00 PM

 

Location: National Arts Centre, Fountain Room, 53 Elgin Street, Ottawa, Ontario, K1P 5W1, Canada

 

CSCA is looking for three speakers on the topic of their start-up commercial space venture modeled on the format of the O’Reilly’s Ignite Talks under the motto “Enlighten Us, But Make It Quick!”. Anyone who is interested should submit an abstract with contact information and a 5-minute presentation for consideration, to Marc Boucher.

 

CSCA is looking for two volunteers for the CSCA 2012 Conference. If you are interested in this opportunity, please email Farnaz Ghadaki.

 

To find out more about this event, please visit the Canadian Space CommerceAssociation website. For registration, please visit: http://2012canadianspacecommerceassociation.eventbrite.com/

 

 

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January 9, 2012

ASX 2012 Symposium in Toronto

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Credits: ASX

 

 

The University of Toronto Astronomy and Space Exploration Society (ASX) announced its 9th annual symposium. The ASX symposium is an event that aims to educate the public on space exploration related topics. Past symposium speakers include the Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, Anousheh Ansari, and Dr. Carolyn Porco.

 

The event’s topic this year is Space 2.0: What’s Next?. The end of the space shuttle era has brought the rise of private companies in the space sector. This year’s speakers, Dr. Nicole Buckley, Dr. Marc Millis, and Mr. Thomas A. Olson, will talk about emerging space technologies and how the private companies in the space sector will change the dynamics of the industry.

 

 

You can find more details about the symposium on the ASX 2012 Symposium page on Eventbrite. Also, ASX has a new website, which you might want to check out.

 

 

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June 2, 2010

Mars 500 Update

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Credits: ESA – S. Corvaja

 

 

After a successful simulated Mars mission that lasted for only 150 days, the Mars 500 experiment will go to the next level: the 520-day mission. The hatch of the facility hosted at the Russian Institute for Biomedical Problems in Moscow will be sealed again tomorrow, on June 3, 2010.

 

 

There are six crewmembers selected plus a Russian backup: Diego Urbina, Romain Charles, Sukhrob Kamolov, Alexey Sitev, Alexandr Smoleevskiy, Mikhail Sinelnikov, and Wang Yue. The crew will live and work for 520 days inside the sealed facility in the same way astronauts live and work on the International Space Station (minus the zero-g environment, of course).

 

You can find more information about the Mars 500 project on the dedicated page on ESA’s website.

 

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Credits: KuoShen Choong

 

This year, the Kalman filter, an essential part of the development of space technology, has its 50th anniversary. To quote from the announcement of the 2008 Charles Stark Draper Prize, the Kalman filter is an “optimal digital technique that is pervasively used to control a vast array of consumer, health, commercial, and defense products.”

 

In order to understand what a Kalman filter is, we should remember that a water filter is used to remove impurities from water by passing them through strata of sand, charcoal, etc. The modern usage of the term filter though involves more abstract entities than fluids with suspended impurities. In the context of electrical engineering, we can think of a filter in the sense of signal processing.

 

 

More generally, and I promise I will try not to make it more complicated than this, a filter is used to estimate the state of a system (whatever we want the system to be) using measurements that are affected by errors. Are you aware of any measurements not affected by errors? Exactly! This is why filters are very useful.

 

The Kalman filter is able to produce estimates of the true values of the measurements by computing weighted averages of the predicted values and the measurements themselves. Believe it or not, the estimated values produced by the filter tend to be closer to the true values than the original measurements. Many extensions and generalizations of the Kalman filter have been developed. One of them is the unscented Kalman filter (can anyone guess why this variation of the filter is called unscented?).

 

The Kalman filter is named after Rudolf E. Kalman. Kalman first published his ideas on filtering in two papers in 1960 and 1961: Kalman, R.E., A New Approach to Linear Filtering and Prediction Problems, Journal of Basic Engineering, Trans. ASME, Series D, Vol. 82, No. 1, 1960, pp. 35-45, and Kalman, R.E., and Bucy, R.S., New Results in Linear Filtering and Prediction Theory, Journal of Basic Engineering, Trans. ASME, Series D, Vol. 83, No. 3, 1961, pp. 95-108. A downloadable version of the first paper can be found on Professor Greg Welch’s web page dedicated to The Seminal Kalman Filter Paper at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. If anyone has a downloadable version of the second paper, please let me know. I would be happy to link to it.

 

As Kalman’s ideas on filtering were met with skepticism in the electrical engineering and systems engineering communities, he published his research results in mechanical engineering. One of the scientists who supported his ideas was Stanley F. Schmidt of NASA’s Ames Research Center. Kalman filters were employed by the control systems used in the Apollo program, and later in the Space Shuttle program.

 

Credits: Ryan K. Morris/National Science & Technology Medals Foundation

 

Rudolf Emil Kalman was born in Budapest, Hungary, on May 19, 1930. His father was an electrical engineer. Having decided to follow in his father’s footsteps, he emigrated to the United States and obtained a Bachelor Degree in 1953 and a Master’s Degree in 1954 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the D.Sci. Degree in 1957 from Columbia University, under the direction of Professor J.R. Ragazzini.

 

 

From 1957 to 1958 Kalman worked as a staff engineer at the IBM Research Laboratory in Poughkeepsie, New York. He worked as a research mathematician at the Research Institute for Advanced Study in Baltimore from 1958 until 1964. During this period of time, he made his innovative contributions to modern control theory. He became a professor at Stanford University, where he lectured between 1964 and 1971, and later a graduate research professor in the departments of mathematics, electrical engineering, and industrial and systems engineering at the University of Florida at Gainesville. While at the University of Florida, he established the Center for Mathematical Systems Theory (CMST). Since 1973, he also held the chair for Mathematical Systems Theory at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.

 

Rudolf Kalman is the recipient of numerous awards. He was awarded the IEEE Medal of Honor in 1974, the IEEE Centennial Medal in 1984, the Inamori Foundation’s Kyoto Prize in High Technology in 1985, the Steele Prize of the American Mathematical Society in 1987, the Richard E. Bellman Control Heritage Award in 1997, and the Charles Stark Draper Prize of the National Academy of Engineering in 2008. Rudolf Kalman is also a foreign member of the Hungarian, French, and Russian Academies of Science and he is the holder of many honorary doctorates.

 

Rudolf Kalman had several Ph.D. students at each of the institutions where he was a faculty member. Among them, Edward W. Kamen (Julian T. Hightower Professor Emeritus at the Georgia Institute of Technology), Yves Rouchaleau (faculty member at the Ecole des Mines de Paris), Patrick Dewilde (member of the Institute for Advanced Study, TU München), and Yutaka Yamamoto (Professor in the Department of Applied Analysis and Complex Dynamical Systems at the Graduate School of Informatics of Kyoto University). The April 2010 issue of the IEEE Control Systems Magazine contains a series of essays written by the above mentioned.

 

A very good source of information about the Kalman filter is a website maintained by Greg Welch and Gary Bishop, faculty members of the Department of Computer Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

 

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